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AST
Days
OF
MarIj
1
E Antoinette
LAST DAYS
OK
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
LAST DAYS
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
LORD RONALD COWER.
WITH PORTHAIT AND FACSIMILES.
LONDON :
KEGAN PAUL. TRENCH, & Ca. i PATERNOSIKR SQUARE.
1885.
1 v'5H77r)
'* Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me—
Almost no grave allowed me ; like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourished,
ril hang my head and perish."
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.•:
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•• • •
• • •
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• •• • •
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I* ••
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• • •
PREFACE.
'T^HERE is nothing new relating to the last
days of Marie Antoinette in the fol-
lowing sketch. At one time I had intended
writing the whole story of her life ; but this
I have relinquished.
The Queen's life becomes chiefly interest-
ing as it approaches its end, and is chiefly
remarkable by showing how a woman, whose
vi PREFACE.
early years were trifled thoughtlessly away,
and who in later life, most unfortunately for
her family, herself, and her adopted country,
mixed herself in politics, where women are
ever mischievous, was raised through suffer-
ing to an heroic level.
As the clouds of adversity gathered around,
Marie Antoinette displayed a patience and
a courage in unparalleled sufferings such as
few saints and martyrs have equalled.
The pure ore of her nature was but hidden
under the dross of worldliness ; and the
scorching fire of suffering revealed one of
the tenderest hearts and one of the bravest
natures that history records. To this is
owing, I believe, the universal interest felt
in her life and in her misfortunes.
PREFACE. vii
Among a crowd of others, my authorities
for the following pages have been Campar-
don's " Marie Antoinette k la Conciergerie "
and Saint Amand's work on the same sub-
ject.
LAST DAYS
OF
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
/^N the 2d of August 1793, the widow
of Louis XVI., Queen of France and
Navarre, and Archduchess of Austria, the
once brilliant sovereign of Versailles, now a
prisoner, torn from her children and treated
like a common felon, was removed from the
prison of the Temple to that of the Concier-
gerie, there to linger until her release from
»
human barbarity on the i6th of October.
lo LAST DAYS OF
I propose writing an account of those last
seventy-six days of a life once so bright, now
brought to the lowest depth of moral and
physical suffering.
The Conciergerie is one of the most curious
and interesting monuments of ancient Paris.
A fortress in the days of Eude, Count of Paris,
who here defied the Normans, it was enlarged
by Robert the Pious, and from his time to
that of Charles the Wise was the principal
dwelling-place of the French kings. Later
occupied by the Parliament, it became trans-
formed into a State prison, although a portion
of the building was still reserved for the use
of the Parliament, the State Exchequer, and
other judiciary bodies.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. ii
Its splendid groined stone hall, recently
restored, dates from the reign of St. Louis,
as does also the adjoining Sainte Chapelle,
one of the gems of mediaeval ecclesiastical
architecture, which in our days almost mira-
culously escaped uninjured the petroleum-fed
flames of the Commune, which destroyed a
portion of the prison.
In one of the vast halls of this building,
when occupied by the Parliament, Louis XIV.
entered during a sitting, booted and spurred,
and declared that he was the State; and in
this same hall, in 1793, on the loth of March,
the Revolutionary Tribunal held its first sit-
ting. It was a strange fate that this building,
once the dwelling-place of the sovereigns of
12 LAST DAYS OF
the House of Capet, when holding their state
in the capital, should see a captive within
its walls the widow of their descendant, — the
" widow Capet,'* as the Jacobins described her
in their blood-stained edicts.
One can form no idea by seeing the Con-
ciergerie, even that portion of it where pri-
soners are still kept, in its present trim and
well-kept state, of the appearance of the build-
ing during the Revolution.
Beugnot has given us his experiences of it
in his Memoirs. "The staircases,*' he writes,
"of the palace (prison) were crowded with
women, who appeared to be waiting there for
some attractive show. The show was always
ready at hand in the cart that waited to
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 13
carry away the unfortunate victims to the guil-
lotine. When I arrived, all these people rose
together as in an amphitheatre, yelling with
savage delight, showing the most fiendish
joy at every fresh arrival. In that short
space which I had to pass in order to enter
the prison, I received such a welcome that
I could judge of the reception that awaited
me when I should have to leave."
Beugnot thus describes what a night passed
in the Conciergerie was like, and one may
believe him when he says that those who
have not passed through such an ordeal can-
not know its terror.
•* From hour to hour the chimes beat slowly
out these long hours of suffering; the watch-
/f ^
14 LAST DAYS OF
dogs respond with long-drawn-out howls ;
the jailers charged with the different death-
warrants {acies cT accusation) take these from
cell to cell till far Into the night, and awake
every prisoner by their menacing and insult-
ing voices. Every one believes that his last
hour has arrived; thus these death-sentences,
destined for from sixty to eighty people daily,
are so distributed that six hundred are kept
in perpetual alarm."
Another writer, M. de Beaulieu, has also
written of his experiences in this prison.
He says that when the river rises, the lower
portion of the prison gets flooded, and that
the whole place soaks with damp. The water
runs down the walls; the air is almost un-
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 15
breathable, so tainted is it with the horrible
emanations that come from the miserable
crowds of prisoners huddled together. ** It
seemed," he adds, "as if the most pestilen-
tial of all the prisons had been purposely
selected for that of the Queen/' To such
a place and to such a situation had been
brought one who formerly reigned at Ver-
sailles, at Fontainebleau, at Compi^gne and
St. Cloud.
But as Marie Antoinette enters this dismal
place, and till she leaves it for the scaffold,
she is, ** although unqueened, yet like a queen
and daughter to a king.'*
Her appearance at this time one can
gather from the portrait by Kocharsko, of
i6 LAST DAYS OF
which there are several repetitions. The ori-
ginal I believe to be the one in the collec-
tion of the Prince d'Aremberg at Brussels. A
photograph of this portrait appears at the
commencement of these notes.
The face is still " majestic though in ruin,"
and shows the almost haughty mien which
never quite left the daughter of the Caesars ;
the proud arch of the eyebrow, the aquiline
nose, and the marked prominence of the lower
lip, that conspicuous feature in all the House
of Hapsburg. Over her fast whitening hair
the Queen wears the common widows cap of
that day, what we call a mob-cap, with its
black ribbon tied in a loose knot below the
kerchief, which, kept by a single pin, crosses
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 17
her chest and shoulders. There is no more
pathetic portrait than this.
The Polish artist may have made a sketch
for this likeness while — as he is tradition-
ally said to have been — employed about the
Queen as one of the gendarmes set to watch
her ; but, as the evidence in Michonis' case
proves, an artist was introduced into the
Queen's prison. At any rate, it was painted
by one who had opportunity of not only
studying the Queen's features, but of por-
traying her expression ; — features and ex-
pression which neither imprisonment nor
suffering could degrade or alter.
On the I St of August the Convention re-
gistered an order that ** Marie Antoinette
I
I
\
I
i8 LAST DAYS OF
be sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal. She
will be immediately transferred to the Con-
ciergerie."
J On the night following, or rather in the
early morning of the following day, the Queen,
who was still with her daughter, Madame
Royale, and her sister-in-law, Madame Eliza-
beth, in the Temple, was awoke by the com-
missioners at two in the morning.
In her short account of the days of her im-
prisonment Madame Royale writes as follows :
** My mother listened to the reading of the
order for her removal without saying one
word, nor did she display any emotion. My
aunt and I begged to be allowed to accom-
pany her, but were refused this privilege.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 19
While she made up a packet of her clothes,
the municipal guards kept close beside her, nor
would allow her even to change her dress
in private. They ordered her to empty out
her pockets, searched her, and took away all
that she had in them, although there was
nothing of any consequence to take. They
made a parcel of the things they found,
which they said would be sent to the Re-
volutionary Tribunal."
What they took from the Queen was a
small packet in which was some of her hus-
band's and children's hair, a little register
on which she taught her son arithmetic, a
pocket-book in which she had written the
address of her children's doctor, miniatures
20 LAST DAYS OF
of Madame de Lamballe and two old friends
of her youth, the Princesses of Hesse and
of Mecklenburg, and two printed prayers.
These commissioners were good enough to
allow the Queen to keep her handkerchief,
and also her smelling-bottle. After taking
a tender farewell of her daughter, and tell-
ing her to regard Madame Elizabeth as a
second mother, and after a few whispered
words to the latter, the Queen tore herself
from the room, "without again looking at
us," adds her daughter, **for fear of losing
her self-control.'*
At the foot of the staircase of the tower
she had to wait while the municipal guards
made out a proces-verbal of her discharge from
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 21
the Temple. In going out, she struck her
head against the upper part of the door,
not seeing how low it was. On being asked
if she had hurt herself, she answered, **No;
nothing can hurt me now/*
Madame Royale was not an authoress,
but perhaps the very simplicity of her nar-
rative, the uncoloured description of this scene,
in which the long agony of the Queen may
be said to commence, is more touching than
had she written of it at greater length and
with more effusion.
He who can read the daughter's account of
this supreme parting and not feel touched at
it, must have something very hard in the
place where his heart should be.
22 LAST DAYS OF
Outside the gate of the Temple a closed car-
riage was waiting, which the Queen entered,
accompanied by Michonis, one of the muni-
cipals, and two gendarmes. It was three
o'clock in the morning when the carriage drew
up at the gate of the Queen's new prison.
Within the Conciergerie the wife of the
jailer, Richard, and her servant were sitting
up, expecting the arrival of the Queen — Ma-
dame Richard's, and especially Rosalie Lamor-
liere's, names should be remembered, as from
them the last acts of kindness and sympathy
were shown to one whom the whole world
seemed to have deserted.
During the first portion of her imprison-
ment in the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 23
occupied a room called the Chamber of the
Council, where, before the Revolution, the
magistrates were wont to meet on certain
days of the year to hear the complaints of
the prisoners. This room had lately been
tenanted by General de Custines. The
Queen found a number of gendarmes drawn
up at the door of her new prison, and within
several of the Revolutionary Tribunal were
gathered to see their new victim. The cere-
mony of the prisoner's registration having
been finished, these left, leaving the Queen
alone with Madame Richard and Rosalie.
The latter has left a record of the Queen's
imprisonment, which has been considered
truthful by all those who have written on
24 LAST DAYS OF
the subject At first, says Rosalie, the Queen
seemed surprised at the bareness of her new
prison. She was suffering much from the
heat, her face bathed with perspiration.
After hanging up her watch to a nail on
the wall, she commenced to take off her
things. Rosalie, who offered to assist her, was
thanked by the Queen, who said to her that
since she had been in prison she was used to
do for herself. Her manner, Rosalie adds,
was completely simple and kind.
Just outside the Queen's prison was a wine-
shop, to which the prisoners flocked, shouting
their ribald songs within a few feet of where
the Queen was obliged to sit during those long
August days. She was in the worst quarter of
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 25
the Conciergerie, where the lowest scum of
the non-political prisoners are kept. She was
not even allowed the dignity of solitude in her
confinement, and was obliged to be within ear-
shot of the profanities and obscenities of the
lowest rabble in the world. Two gendarmes
occupied a portion of the room, and an old
woman of eighty was placed near her. She
helped her to patch up her scanty wardrobe,
but she was soon replaced by another woman,
named Harel, whom the Queen suspected of
being a spy, and to whom, in consequence,
she hardly ever spoke. The night of her
arrival at the Conciergerie the Queen had
not so much as a change of linen. For days
she begged to be allowed some, but it was
I 1
I
\
I
t 26 LAST DAYS OF
f
not until the tenlh day that her prayer
!
I was granted, when Michonis went to the
Temple and brought back with him a parcel
/ of linen and some clothes; among others, a
white gown, which the Queen wore on the
day of her execution. On seeing the care
with which these clothes had been selected,
' the Queen said to Rosalie that she knew she
i owed them to "my poor sister Elizabeth."
I De Beaulieu, whom we have already quoted,
[ writes thus : " Among the prisoners was a con-
j vict of the name of Barrasin, a most forbid-
I ding-looking fellow, who helped to make up
the Queen's prison." Knowing this, Beaulieu
inquired of him how the Queen was treated.
" Like any one else," was the answer ; and on
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 27
his asking Barrasin how the Queen passed her
time, " Oh, the Capet mends her stockings."
•'What sort of a bed has she got?"
"A straw mattress, like your own," said
the convict.
" How is she dressed ? "
" She wears a black gown, which is all torn
and in holes, and she looks in it like une
Margot''
^ Little by little everything was taken from the
poor Queen. The souvenirs of her happy past
life, to which she clung, being all that were left
her of former days, were ruthlessly taken ; first
her watch, a gift of her mother's, and which
had never left her since she left Vienna, — the
watch which had counted the happy hours of
28 LAST DAYS OF
her youth and womanhood was taken from
her. She wept bitterly, Rosalie says, at having
to part with it, as if it had been a friend.
In the diary of Marie Antoinette's daughter,
Madame Royale, she mentions that her mother
was accustomed to drink only water, not that
of the Seine, which made her ill, but from the
Ville d'Avray. She had obtained it daily at
the Temple, but it was not allowed her in the
Conciergerie.
The Queen sent to get her knitting (tricof)
from the Temple, where she had been making
a pair of socks for the Dauphin, or, as they
called him now, Louis XVII. "We sent,"
writes the Princess, " everything we could find in
the shape of cotton and worsted, knowing how
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 29
fond my mother was of all kinds of work.
Formerly she was always so engaged, except
when obliged to hold her court (aux heures
de representation). She had worked an im-
mense quantity of tapestry for furniture, and
had even made a carpet."
So she and Madame Elizabeth packed up
all these things, fondly hoping they would be
given the Queen. But she was not allowed
any of them, "for fear," adds the Princess,
" that she would injure herself with the
needles."
^ Unable to obtain her work things and
without any knitting-needles, Marie Antoinette,
according to Rosalie, managed to pick out
some threads from an old piece of wall covering,
D
30 LAST DAYS OF
which oddly enough was ornamented with the
royal badge of the fleur-de-lys, and with these
threads and a pair of toothpicks for needles,
and resting the work on her knee as a work-
frame, was enabled to make some garters. On
arriving at the Conciergerie the Queen had
but one cap, and this in daily use began to get
shabby. Madame Richard was, however, able
to get her another. *' I have nothing worth
giving her,'* she said one day to Rosalie, " but
take this," giving Rosalie a piece of lawn that
she found she could spare from one of those
poor widow s head-dresses.
One day, kindly intending, Madame Richard
brought into the Queen's prison her youngest
child, a chubby pretty boy of about eight years
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 31
old — the Dauphin's age. The Queen took him
in her arms and burst into bitter tears. Her
poor boy was never out of the Queen's mind
night or day. Of all her many tortures, that
of knowing that he was ill-treated and in the
wretch Simon's hands was the most fearful.
More than one attempt had been made
to induce the Queen to escape from the
Temple, but as long as the King, and, after
the King's death, her children remained with
her, she always refused to leave them. But
now, alone, and with the shadow of the
guillotine creeping ever nearer, the solitary
Queen appears to have been willing to
escape. A determined attempt was made at
the beginning of September to get her out
32 LAST DAYS OF
of the Conciergerie ; an attempt only resulting
in failure. From a clove having been employed
in this conspiracy, it is known as that of the
clove - pink — " La conspiration de roeillet."
The following is a translation of the proch-
verbal^ taken from M. Campardon's work,
** Marie Antoinette k la Conciergerie:" —
" No. I. — Report made by the Citizen Gil-
bert, gendarme of the widow Capet.
Dedicated to Citizen Demesnil, Lieu-
tenant-Colonel of the Gendarmerie, 3d
September 1793.
"In my difficult position, I should be
wanting in my duty in not informing you
of the risk run by introducing near the
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 33
widow Capet suspicious people ; and in order
that I and my companions should not be
compromised, the following statement is the
truth relating to this affair. The last time
but one that the Citizen Michonis came, he
brought with him an individual, at seeing
whom the widow Capet was visibly agitated.
She declared him to be a ci-devant knight
of St Louis, and that she trembled lest he
should be discovered. She also said that
he had given her a pink containing a note,
and that he would return on the following
Friday. Also, that while the maid of the
widow Capet was playing with me at cards,
she pricked a note with a pin, which she
bade me give to the knight of St. Louis.
34 LAST DAYS OF
Not wishing to have to reproach myself
or neglect my duties, I took it at once
to the jailer, to whose wife I gave the
paper, and made the same reports as here
stated."
On the strength of this denunciation the
Queen underwent an examination by some
members of the Revolutionary Tribunal on the
3d of September. This examination began
with the following questions and replies : —
Q. Are you the person who is called the
widow Capet?
A. I am.
Q. Do you see any one where you are
placed ?
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 35
A. Only those people who are placed
about me, and the officials who have come
with persons whom I do not know.
Q. Have you not seen lately a ci-devant
knight of St. Louis .'^
A. It is possible, so many persons come.
Q. Do you not know the names of some
of those who have come with the officials ?
A. I do not remember the names of
any.
Q. Among those who have come into your
room, did you not recognise any one?
A. No.
Q. Did not some one recognise you lately }
A. I cannot remember.
Q. Did not a man give you a pink ?
f
*
36 LAST DAYS OF
A. There are some of those flowers in my
room.
Q. Did you not receive a letter ?
A. How could I receive one with the
people in the room, and the woman who
always watches from the window ?
Q. Would it not have been possible to have
given you a pink containing a letter?
A. I doubt it, as the woman would have
noticed it, and she said nothing.
Q. Have you not written anything lately?
A. I have no materials for writing.
And so on for many pages. But the fact
was, the poor Queen had not only received a
letter, but had also answered it by pricking
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 37
some words with a pin or needle on a small
strip of paper. She can hardly be blamed for
denying a fact which, were it revealed — and she
knew not of Gilbert's having denounced her —
would not only condemn her, but the devoted
man who had attempted her deliverance, and
of whose safety she could not then have
known.
Although De Rougeville escaped the guillo-
tine, he fell under the bullets of the Bonapar-
tists in 1 8 14, having been convicted of another
Legitimist plot.
Alexandre Dumas has, in one of his most
stirring romances, celebrated De Rougeville's
courage, but has changed that name to that
of the Chevalier de la Maison Rouge.
38 LAST DAYS OF
Towards the close of her examination, the
Queen, who seems to have regained her
lofty spirit, on being asked whether she was
not interested in the success of the enemy's
armies, replied, " I interest myself in the
success of those of my son's nation ; when
one is a mother, that is the dearest inte-
rest."
Being asked what was her son's nationality,
she replied, "Can you doubt it? Is he not
French ? "
*'Your son,'* they argued, "being only a
private individual, has been obliged to relin-
quish all the vain prerogatives that formerly
were attached to the title of king."
" There is no prouder one," the Queen
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 39
answered, " than that of desiring the happiness
of France."
" Then you are doubtless much pleased that
neither kings nor royalty now exist."
"All that we wish," she replied to this
sneer, ''is that France should be great and
happy."
When asked if she agreed with the opinions
of her husband, she said with firmness, " Yes.
I have always fulfilled my duty. If," she
added, " France is to be happy with a king,
then I desire it should be so with my son,
and I regard those mine enemies who wish
evil to my children."
Interrogations followed. Marie Bault, who
had waited on the Queen, denied that tJie!
40 LAST DAYS OF
stranger (De Rouge ville) had offered a flower
or spoken to the Queen ; nor had she
seen her write with a needle or otherwise.
Michonis (the municipal guard) also underwent
an examination ; but little came of it. He was,
however, imprisoned on suspicion, and on
the 23d of May 1794 executed with fifty-four
others, including C6cile Renault, suspected of
intending to assassinate Robespierre. An allu-
sion is made to Michonis having introduced
a painter into the Queen's presence ; this was
doubtless Kocharsko, whose portrait of the
Queen has been already referred to, Gilbert,
the gendarme who had betrayed the unfor-
tunate confidence the Queen had placed in
him, gave evidence to the same effect as
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 41
that in his letter. He added to this the
extraordinary statement, which he asserted
the Queen had made him, that she not only
showed him the answer to De Rougeville's
note, but the paper on which she had
pricked the answer. ** You see," he said the
Queen remarked, " I can write without a
pen 1 " Always imprudent, the unfortunate
Queen seems to have quite forgotten the
extreme peril of taking such a man as
this gendarme appears to have been into
her confidence ; she suffered terribly for
this, as she had done for all her other
imprudences. Others were examined, but
nothing could be proved as long as the
principal agent, De Rougeville, was at liberty.
42 LAST DAYS OF
and, fortunately for him, he managed to
elude all pursuit. Whether or not it was
owing to being aware of this, on her second
examination by the commissioners the Queen
acknowledged having received a letter. On
being asked what that note contained, she
said, " Only a few vague sentences. * What
do you intend doing ? I have escaped from
prison miraculously. I will come on Friday.' '*
There was also an offer of money in it,
and she added that she had no intention
of accepting any. On being pressed to tell
what she had written on the slip of paper
with the needle, she said, ** I tried to mark,
* I am closely watched. I do not speak or
write.' " On being shown the paper, she
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 43
recognised it. They asked what had passed
between her and De Rouge ville. "He asked
me," she replied, ** if my heart failed me ;
and I said, * It never fails me, but it is
profoundly afflicted/" In an interesting little
book by the Comte de Reiset, " Lettres
in^dites de Marie Antoinette," a reproduc-
tion of the Queen's needle-pricked note is
given. It reads thus : " Je me fie a vous,
je viendrai," after the line to which she
confessed having written to the commis-
sioners.
How and in what manner De Rougeville
intended releasing the Queen from the
Conciergerie will never be known. There
are various suppositions — one, the least impro-
44 LAST DAYS OF
bable, being that, having gained over Michonis
and the gendarmes, he would be enabled, by
a forged order from the Municipality instruct-
ing Michonis to take the Queen back to
the Temple, to put her in a carriage, in
which, protected by a mounted body of
Royalists, they would make their way to the
frontier.
Alluding to this attempt, Madame Royale
writes, in her account of her family's imprison-
ment, that she had learnt since the death
of the Queen that attempts had been made
to get her out of the Conciergerie. " I
have been assured," writes the Princess,
" that the gendarmes who watched her and
the wife of the doorkeeper had been gained
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 45
over by some of our friends; that she had
seen several people devoted to her in her
prison, amongst others a priest, who had
administered the sacraments to her, which
she had received with deep piety. The
chance of escape was missed on one occa-
sion, as she had been told to speak to the
second guard, and by mistake she spoke
to the first. Another time, she had got
out of the room, and had already passed
through the corridor, when she was stopped
by a gendarme, and obliged to return to
her room, although he had been gained
over. A great many persons were interested
in my mother's fate ; and indeed, except the
vilest, of whom also there were many, it
F
46 LAST DAYS OF
was impossible to be with her for however
short a time without being filled for her
with respect, so much goodness was mixed
with the dignity of her manner. At the
time these things happened we knew no
details, but we only heard that my mother
had seen a knight of St. Louis, who had
given her a pink which contained a note.*'
In the Baron de Klinckowstoem's work,
*' Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France,'*
this affair is told as follows : —
De Rougeville knew Madame Dutilleul, an
American (this must be an error on Fersen's
part, as Madame Dutilleuls maiden name was
Sophie Lebon, a native of Paris), and they
formed a project to save the Queen. They
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 47
gained over Fontanis, an honest man, a timber
merchant, and Michonis. Michonis would not
accept any money, but paid the others. One
day De Rougeville accompanied Michonis to
the prison. The Queen rose and said, " Oh, it
is you, Monsieur Michonis,** and on seeing
M. de Rougeville became greatly agitated,
and almost fainted, which surprised the gen-
darmes. He made a sign to her to reassure
herself, and told her to take some pinks,
where a letter was concealed. She did not
dare to do so, and he dropt them. The
Queen then sent for Michonis, and while
he spoke to the gendarmes, she said to De
Rougeville that he was running too much
risk, and he said that she should be saved.
48 LAST DAYS OF
and that he would bring her money to gain
over the gendarmes. She then said to him,
" If I appear weak and broken, this," placing
her hand on her heart, **is not so." She
asked him whether her trial would soon come
on. He reassured her. She said to him, "Look
at me and at my bed, and tell my relations
and my friends, if you can escape, the con-
dition you have seen me in." They then left.
The doorkeeper and his wife had been gained.
The plan was that Michonis, who had brought
the Queen from the Temple to the Conciergerie,
should go at night at ten o'clock, and remove
the Queen by order of the Municipality to the
Temple, as it were, and thus get her away.
But one of the gendarmes, who apparently
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 49
had not been gained, opposed her, and pre-
vented the Queen from leaving the prison.
And so ended this disastrous attempt. Its
only consequence was to hasten her trial, and
to enhance the horrors of her confinement by
removing her to a far worse dungeon than
the prison in which she had passed the first
month of her imprisonment. All, even the
devotion of her friends, seemed but to con-
spire to add greater sufferings to the unfor-
tunate Queen.
On the nth of September, Marie Antoi-
nette was transferred from the prison-room she
had occupied since the 2d of August into
the dark and narrow underground cell still
shown to visitors interested in her tragic life.
50 LAST DAYS OF
But there have been many alterations made
there since the days of the Terror.
Passing through the courtyard of the Con-
ciergerie, a vast hall is entered, lately restored ;
this the body-guard of St. Louis are said
to have occupied. At the end of this vaulted
hall, on the left, some steps are descended;
turning to the right, a dark passage is
reached ; at the end of this, on the left, is the
room occupied by the gendarmes during the
imprisonment of the Queen — now transformed
into a bathroom for the use of prisoners — and
next to it is the Queen's prison. The opening
between these two rooms has been closed.
A heavily barred door, by which the Queen s
prison is now entered^ is not in its original
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 51
position, as it formerly was in the room of
the gendarmes ; now, as has already been said,
it is in the prison bathroom.
Formerly there was no ingress to the
Queen's cell but through this room, the
doorway, where it now is, having been walled
up. The window has also been altered,
having been enlarged in the reign of Louis
XVIII. The pictures, mere daubs, that now
hang on the prison-wall, one representing
the separation of the Royal Family on the
eve of the King's execution, the other the
Queen taking the sacrament in prison — an
occurrence which probably did not take place
— date also from that reign. The crucifix is
said to have belonged to the Queen; but
52 LAST DAYS OF
this, too, is improbable, as, had she pos-
sessed one, it would have undoubtedly been
taken from her. This is placed on the wall
above a tablet and an altar; these also date
from the Restoration. The only portions of
this cell that exist now as when the Queen
was confined in it are the bricks with
which the floor is tiled, the ceiling, and the
walls.
The opening communicating with the ad-
joining prison, in which Robespierre is sup-
posed to have passed a few hours before his
execution, has also been made since the time
of the Queen's imprisonment ; it is now used
as the Sacristy of the Chapel. A large vaulted
chamber beyond, famous as being the room
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 53
in which the Girondins passed their last night
together, is now the Chapel, and Mass is
celebrated weekly here before the prisoners.
Nothing much more gloomy or wretched
than this new place of captivity into which
the Queen was placed can well be imagined ;
but in order to render it still more so, the
Queen's jailers had the heavily barred win-
dow, by which some light struggled into the
cell from the courtyard outside, where the
female prisoners came to wash their linen,
covered half way up with a screen of sheet
iron, and the upper portion wired over. The
prison measured seven feet in depth by six-
teen in length ; but the Queen was only
allowed a portion of this space. The furni-
G
54 LAST DAYS OF
ture of the prison consisted of a little truckle-
bed, a washhand basin, a caned chair, a little
wooden table, with a stool of coarse woollen
work, and two of the chairs used in the prison.
This, and a paper box in which the Queen
kept her dresses, her caps, her kerchiefs,
and her linen, was all that the little maid
could procure for her ; but that little was
as gratefully received by the prisoner as if
it had been of much value. Up to this
time the Queen appears still to have had
some faint hopes of her life being spared,
probably as that of a hostage ; and accord-
ing to Rosalie Lamorliere, she had said to her
that if she were to leave the Conciergerie,
she would take her with her as her maid.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 55
But after the affair of the pink and the
change to so infinitely worse a prison, and
the rigorous watch now set over her, Marie
Antoinette's heart must have failed within her
as far as any earthly hope was concerned;
but her unshakeable courage, as she had
said to De Rougeville, never failed ; and al-
though the accumulated sufferings and priva-
tions that were now added to her mental
tortures daily increased, she never showed
anything but a patience that, if it had oot
been supported by something unearthly, would
be unaccountable.
It must not be lost sight of that the Queen
was naturally of an imperious and somewhat
easily roused temper, and this was one of
-V. ^
56 LAST DAYS OF
the many causes that made her unpopular
even in her bright days, although no one
was sooner appeased, or more anxious to
atone for any hasty word that might have
/' fallen from her. The Prince de Ligne, in an
unpublished account of the Queen, gives the
following little anecdote to prove this trait in
her character.
One day, wanting some article of dress or
toiittte, she rang for her attendants, and on
their not being able to find what the Queen
wanted, she said pettishly, " How terrible it is
not to be able to find what one wants ! " And
on the Prince de Ligne remarking that she
seemed much annoyed about such a trifle and
angry at so small a cause, she summoned
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 57
her maids, and on their appearance said^ in
order to make up for her former petulance,
** You see how well I am served ; they have
all come together;" much to the delight of
them all.
A trifling incident, but it shows the char-
acter of Marie Antoinette, and it is therefore
worth recording. But now, in these last
days of her life, when surrounded by every
aggravation that could wound a proud spirit,
treated like the worst of offenders, insulted
as mother, wife, queen, and woman, she never
seems to have as much as said one word
that could be construed into petulance, or
given one angry look.
As her sufferings increased, so did her
i
4
S8 LAST DAYS OF
patience; and if she had committed impru-
dences and faults, these were a thousand-fold
atoned for by a constancy in trial that is not
easy to match out of Divine Writ
/ For the details of her last days on earth one
is obliged to trust the accounts left us by her
jailers or their relatives. What seems to me
J ^^ somewhat suspicious in these memoirs is that
tiiey are far too well composed to have been
written by those whose names they bear.
Doubtless /• Rosalie Lamorliere and Madame
Bauk were kind-hearted and sympathetic crea-
i
V
^ tures, but it is scarcely probable that they
f should have written high-flowing accounts of
their prisoner, compared to which the diary of
the Queen's daughter's imprisonment by herself
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 59
. . I ■ ^ 1 — ^M ■
reads as the writing of a schoolgirl, but is all
the more to be trusted for its very simplicity.
Probably, as has often happened with the
memoirs of Rosalie and the others relating
to the Queen's last days, some author of the
day got hold of the rough account written
by them of the Queen's imprisonment, or
got the details by word of mouth, and then
polishing the account, gave it its present
shape." The wife of the new jailer that
guarded the Queen in her new prison — Uame
Bault — has left an account of these days,
named " R6cit exact des derniers moments de
la captivity de la Reine^ depuis la 1 1 Sep-
tembre 1793 jusqu'au 16 Octobre. By the
Dame Bault, widow of her last porter."
s
■
•J
60 LAST DAYS OF
But whether this memoir is strictly accu-
rate or not, it is the only one that gives any
details of the last days of the Queen's life, and
has been trusted as an authority by all the
French authors who have written of that time.
Bault — or Le Beau, as Rosalie writes it — the
Queen's new jailer, was informed by the Tri-
f bunal that his head would be forfeited if the
i Queen escaped; so it is not to be wondered
> at that, although he seems to have sympa-
I'
; thised with the captive, his watch over her
was a rigorous one. No more flowers, of which
the Queen was always passionately fond, were
^ now allowed to be introduced into her cell —
r
I flowers, that, of all the beautiful things of Nature,
f ^ had alone given a little charm and solace to the
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 6t
prisoner. Even her rings were taken from her
— her wedding-ring and two set with diamonds,
which Rosalie observed she used to change
from one hand to the other — those hands still
so white and beautiful. Marie Antoinette, who,
even when at Versailles, hated having nothing
to occupy herself with, and disliked the tedious
court ceremonies for debarring her from her
music, her books, and her embroidery, was now
reduced to work a kind of garter with threads
taken from her bedding, and not being allowed
any knitting-needles, used a pair of tooth-
picks. When finished, the Queen dropped this
garter with a significant look when Bault en-
tered the prison. It reached — thanks to one
of her loyalest followers, Mons. Hue, a faithful
n
62 LAST DAYS OF
servant of Louis XVI. — its destination, for
he gave it to the Queen's daughter when he
accompanied her to Vienna two years later.
The Queen had not been so fortunate with
another little relic that she hoped her child
would receive. This consisted of a pair of gloves
and a lock of her hair, which she had slipped
into Bault's hand ; but the action was observed
by one of the gendarmes, and the little parcel
was confiscated.
There was not a moment that the Queen
could be out of sight of her gendarmes ; a little
screen four feet high was the only separation
between the space in which she changed her
dress and those men. Imagine the misery of
this state for a woman so delicately nurtured,
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 63
SO luxuriously brought up, accustomed not
only to the most refined manner of life, but
to that of a court which had never been, and
never can be, exceeded in all that tended
to make existence — if mere external respect
and deference can promote happiness — a living
pageant and a realised dream. Imagine this
change for a woman not only accustomed
to soft living, but for nearly twenty years
treated as half divine, having a house-
hold of over four hundred persons at her
command, and who, although she always
seemed to love to leave the glare and splen-
dour and pomp of representation for the quiet
of her own friends, and seemed only really
happy with them and her children, yet could
64 LAST DAYS OF
dazzle those accustomed to the greatest courts
by the magnificence of her state, and win the
admiration and homage of foreigners, who,
prepared to criticise, were carried away by so
much beauty, grace, and charm.
Alas ! she whom Edmund Burke had seen
" glittering like the morning star, full of life and
splendour and joy,'* was hurled low indeed.
But to me Marie Antoinette is a far nobler
figure as I can see her in her last prison, with
her widow's cap over her almost white hair,
her frayed and patched black gown, and the
wretched truckle-bed that stands against the
damp stone wall of her prison, than when
in the heyday of her youth and beauty at
Versailles, the cynosure of all that is highest
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 65
and gayest in that huge palace, or when
playing the part of the miller s wife in her court
gardens at Trianon. Then she was but a
brilliant queen and attractive woman, with
most of the faults of her sex ; but at the
Conciergerie she may claim in history to hold
a place with the noblest of human kind that
have gone through great trials with added lustre
to their names, — of those who have attained a
more excellent renown, and who have come out
of ** great tribulation '* with the stains of their
poor humanities and weaknesses washed for
ever away.
Rosalie, the faithful maid, was still in at-
tendance on the Queen, although Michonis,
owing to the conspiracy of the pink, had been
66 LAST DAYS OF
removed. Bault, the new jailer, appears to
have been a well-meaning man, touched with
the sorrows of the august victim he had in
charge, but not daring to show his feelings.
He appears to have been distressed when,
on offering to do up the Queen's hair for
her, she gave him one of her majestic looks,
and said she would prefer doing that herself.
Formerly a matter of immense time and trouble,
the Queen's hair was now soon arranged. She
divided it in the middle and raised it on
the sides, and probably — thanks to Rosalie —
had some perfumed powder, which she would
sprinkle on it whenever aware that she would
have to appear before her judges and the pub-
lic. The poor woman, with a last sad touch
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 67
of the wish to please, which never left her
even in the last bitter days, would take extra
pains to appear as becoming as her poor
means could afford.
Bault managed to arrange that the Queen
should have better food than the ordinary
of the prisoners, as had been ordered by the
judges. He said that, being responsible for
the life of the Queen, he would take charge
of all the viands that entered her cell. By this
means he could occasionally procure her such
little luxuries as Madame Bault could cater
for in the markets, where she was known to
some of the market-women ; and it is not a
little touching to hear that these good souls
would keep their best chicken and ripest fruits.
68 LAST DAYS OF
thrusting a peach or a melon into her willing
hands, with " Take it for our good Queen,"
as they called her ; and would smuggle them
into the basket of Dame Bault, with the tears
in their eyes. I never pass a Paris market,
and see the good-natured-looking ** ladies of
the hall," as I believe they still call them-
selves, without recalling the good feeling that
some of their class showed to the poor Queen
when even to allude to her with sympathy
might bring them to the scaffold. Rosalie,
who still waited on her mistress, brought in
her dinner, which consisted of some soup and
chicken or veal on alternate days, with a dish
of vegetables. The plates and dishes were
of pewter. Formerly the Queen only drank
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 69
water. Rosalie mentions that once crossing
the prison-yard with a half-emptied glass of
water, she was accosted by a M. De Saint
Leger, also a prisoner, and, as it seems, a
devoted Royalist ; for, hearing that the Queen
had drank out of the glass, he took off his
hat and drank the remainder. Very French
and very pretty, and one hopes that the Queen
may have heard of it from Rosalie. On another
occasion, while Rosalie was brushing a pair
of the Queen's shoes, some of the imprisoned
Royalists, who were looking through the bars
which separated them from the courtyard,
asked her to come near them in order that
they might touch the Queen's shoes. They not
only did so, but kissed them with deep respect
I
70 LAST DAYS OF
as they passed them from one to the other.
There was indeed no loyalty lacking here in
the Conciergerie, but it came too late.
The damp of the Queen's underground
prison was such that her black gown began
to fall into rags. She had another one, a white
one, but this she only wore during her trial and
on the day of her death. Rosalie patched up
the decaying dress as well as she could, and
the pieces that had fallen from it she gave
to some who asked for them as relics of the
prisoner. The few other clothes were in a
deplorable state and required constant repair.
The Queen was only permitted three shirts,
one ornamented with lace; but the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal decided that but one of
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 71
these should be given the Queen, and worn
ten days before another was allowed her ; even
m
her handkerchiefs were only allowed one by
one, and a strict account was kept of every
article as it came from, or entered the prison.
The Queen herself kept a list of her
linen, marking it down with a pin on the
wall. Rosalie adds that she had also
scratched some other things on the wall ;
but after her death these were all painted
over with a thick coat of whitewash.
Not being allowed a chest of drawers, she
placed her clothes in a paper box that
Rosalie brought her, which she received, says
Rosalie, as if it had been the most beautiful
piece of furniture in the world.
72 LAST DAYS OF
Rosalie also procured her a little looking-
glass, which she had bought for twenty-
five sous on the Quays, a little hand-glass
bordered with red, with little Chinese figures
painted on the sides. This too seemed much
to please the Queen ; and doubtless it gave
her more satisfaction than had done all the
miles of mirrors at Versailles.
With the month of October the cold
weather had set in, and the Queen's suf-
ferings were aggravated by this new trial,
against which, as the cell had no means
of being warmed, there was no remedy.
The only thing Rosalie could do was to
take the Queen's night-dress, and, after warm-
ing it, bring it back to the prisoner ere
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 73
she went to what rest she could obtain in
her wretched cell. No light was allowed
her, only the dim reflection of an oil-lamp
that flickered in the yard outside the grated
window.
In spite of all the precautions that had
been taken by her jailers to make escape
impossible, the Queen was constantly intruded
on by these men, at night as well as during
the day. One day they scolded Bault for
having placed by the side of the bed against
the wall a piece of old tapestry that pro-
tected the bed from the dank stones ; they
wished it removed, and it was only by
Bault's presence of mind in telling them
that he had placed the tapestry there in
74 LAST DAYS OF
order that any sound from the adjoining cell
should be deadened that they allowed it to
remain.
The Queen having asked for a cover-
ing of cotton stuff, Bault took this message
to Fouquier - Tinville, the public prosecutor,
who demanded savagely how he dared
prefer such a request, and, foaming with
rage, told Bault that he deserved to be
guillotined.
Some Sisters of Mercy — and never did they
better deserve that blessed name — were, how-
ever, able to send the Queen some thick
woollen stockings.
No wonder that among such miseries the
Queen's health gave way. The cold and
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 75
damp of the prison brought on severe rheu-
matism, and her eyesight, never strong, be-
came seriously affected ; one of her eyes, in
fact, appears to have been destroyed ; and
there is little doubt that had the trial and
condemnation been postponed for a few more
weeks, the unspeakable sufferings of Marie
Antoinette would have closed within the walls
of the Conciergerie.
Bault's widow bears testimony, in her me-
moir, to the wondrous endurance of the Queen.
She writes : — " I have seen the model of
resignation the most religious and of con-
stancy the most heroic, and it must not be
lost Sight of that the Queen of France was
doomed to drink to the very dregs the bitter
76 LAST DAYS OF
cup of sorrow ; and my everlasting regret will
be to have been unable to do more to assuage
her sufferings." Very noble sentiments, but
hardly the expression one would expect from
the wife of a jailer.
Through the Baults the Queen occasion-
ally had news of her family in the Temple ;
but there could be no alleviation for the poor
mother if she were told how it fared with her
beloved son.
One alleviation — the greatest for a captive
after the consciousness of being innocent of
crimes for which he suffers wrongfully — that
of reading, the Queen obtained through the
attention of her jailer, who got her a few
books ; but we are only told the name of
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 77
one, and that was a translation of our
Captain Cook's travels. Anything that could
have taken her mind off, even for a few
moments, the sufferings she endured must
have been an immense solace, and the stirring
adventures of Cook may have done this for
her.
One day the Queen called Rosalie's atten-
tion to the upper windows of an adjoining house
occupied by some religious order, and to the
figure of a sister praying. ** Look how fer-
vently she prays," said the Queen; and, as
M. De Saint Amand says in his interesting
book, " La Derni^re Ann6e de Marie Antoi-
nette, "She may well be supposed to have
been praying for the captive at her feet."
K
N.
78 LAST DAYS OF
Early in October the Conciergerie — ever
emptying its prisoners for the guillotine and
receiving fresh batches — witnessed the arrival
of some with whom the Queen's history is
closely connected. The first of these was
the Duke of Orleans, the implacable enemy of
Marie Antoinette, whose courage on the way
to death was the only respectable thing in
his life ; the other, the ill-starred, mischievous,
but, on the whole, well-intentioned party of
men known as the Girondins, who soon ex-
perienced the effect of destroying an old
form of constitution without having given
time to a new one to be formed, — were
now under the same roof as the Queen, and
within a few hours shared the same fate.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 79
One of these, Valaz6 — who disappointed the
guillotine by killing himself in prison — wrote to
his wife on the 7th of October. In his letter
he says the thing of all others that most
impresses him, and to which he cannot get
used, is that he is so near the widow Capet,
and that the same bolts and bars confine
them ; " as if," he says, " to show,^as it were,
by this neighbourhood a sort of complicity
between them. This of all things is perhaps
the most extraordinary in my destiny."
As early as the ist of August, Barere
had from the Tribune of the Convention
clamoured that the Queen should appear
before the Revolutionary Tribunal ; but what
made this difficult was that the case against
8o LAST DAYS OF
the Queen was not such as could ensure
her condemnation, and every means was put
into practice to get evidence against her.
At length a diabolical idea occurred to
Hubert, — no other than, by bringing a revolt-
ing charge against Marie Antoinette, to
destroy any sympathy that might still be
felt for her among the public, and thus more
easily to condemn her in the face of the
world. But the monstrous charge served only
to prove the utter depravity of the then
rulers of France, and enabled the Queen, in
a moment and for ever, to vindicate herself,
and not herself only, but humanity at large,
against a calumny that seemed to breathe of
the lowest hell.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 8i
Early in October Fouquier wrote the follow-
ing letter to the President of the Conven-
tion : —
" 5M Oci. — Citizen President, — I have the
honour of informing the Convention that the
decree rendered by it on the 3d of this
month, to the effect that the Revolutionary
Tribunal would immediately without delay
occupy itself with the judgment of the widow
Capet, reached me last night ; but until now
no papers relative to Marie Antoinette have
reached me, so that, with all the desire that
the Tribunal has of executing the decrees
of the Convention, it finds itself unable to
carry out the decree as long as the papers
are not forthcoming."
82 LAST DAYS OF
As De Saint Amand writes, the condem-
nation to death of the Queen is not so
odious as the interrogatories made to the royal
children and Madame Elizabeth. Those who
wish to read these infamous charges will find
them in Mons. Campardon*s work, " Marie
Antoinette h la Conciergerie." It is enough
to say that those who have the misfortune
to know what the accusations were will
know how incapable such a mother as Marie
Antoinette, and such a saint-like woman as
Madame Elizabeth were of even thinking
of such deeds; and to those who still are
fortunate enough not to know the depravity
of human nature, nothing farther need be said,
except what relates to the course of the trial.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 83
The unfortunate Dauphin was first exa-
mined. Utterly demoralised by Simon's treat-
ment of him, he appears to have said what-
ever the three scoundrels of the Revolutionary
Tribunal, David, Pache, and Chaumette, made
him ; the declaration which the poor little
fellow signed is in existence, and it is easy
to see that the child was either too weak or
too dormant to do more than make a few
vague marks.
His sister (Madame Royale) was next called
before these men. Of this interview she
writes the following account : — ** When the
commissioners arrived at the door of the
prison, my aunt only opened the door when
she had finished dressing. Pache asked me
84 LAST DAYS OF
to come below. My aunt wished to follow me,
but was not allowed. She asked if I should
return. Chaumette reassured her, saying, 'You
may rely on the word of a good republican ;
she will return.' I overheard my aunt, who
was trembling all over, and went downstairs.
I was greatly embarrassed. It was the first
time that I had been alone with men ; I had
no idea what they wanted with me ; but I re-
commended myself to God. When I went into
my brother s room " (the Dauphin, or Louis
XVII.) " I kissed him; but I was taken from
him, and told to go into the next room.
Chaumette then asked me a number of ques-
tions of vile accusations against my mother
and my aunt. I was completely overcome,
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 85
with such a horror, and so indignant, that, in
spite of all the fear I felt, I could not help
saying how infamous I thought it. . . . In
spite of my tears they pressed me to answer.
They were things which I did not under-
stand ; but what I understood was so horrible
that I cried with indignation. I had always
heard my parents say that it would be prefer-
able to die than to be the cause of any-
one's ruin. At length my interrogatory finished
at three o'clock ; it had commenced at twelve.
I begged Chaumette to allow me to join my
brother. * I can do nothing/ he said."
Madame Elizabeth was next examined.
"They asked her," says her niece in her
memoir, ** the same questions as they had put
L
S6 LAST DAYS OF
to me, and about those people whom they had
asked me about. She denied having carried
on any correspondence with the outer world,
and answered with intense indignation the
horrors about which they questioned her. At
four o'clock she returned upstairs. Her exa-
mination had only lasted one hour ; mine had
lasted three. This was owing to the deputies
perceiving that they could not intimidate her,
as they had hoped to do with one of my
age " (the Princess was then aged fifteen) ;
" but the life I had been leading during the
last four years, and the example given by
my parents, had given me greater strength of
soul."
Five days after this infamous attempt to
^
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 87
force from the lips of the Queen's children
and her sister-in-law confessions of crimes
against Marie Antoinette, which only the
imagination of such creatures as those who
formed the Revolutionary Tribunal were
capable of suggesting, the Queen's trial com-
menced.
The trial, if such a monstrous farce as this
mock trial of the Queen, who had been con-
demned by her judges long before, and whose
long-tried endurance they tried in every way to
shake, began at six in the evening in the great
chamber above the guardroom of the old palace.
Danton, who was to beg God and men pardon
for the act, had instituted the tribunal before
which the Queen and he himself were both
88 LAST DAYS OF
doomed to appear, — a tribunal that, between
Its creation on the loth of March 1793 and
the 27th July of the following year, sent 2669
victims to the guillotine. The great hall
was plunged in almost total darkness. Only
two candles were lighted ; these were placed
on a desk at which the registrar of the
tribunal, Fabricius, sat. The Queen, dressed
in her widow's cap and her black gown,
sat on a stool in front of the public pro-
secutor, Fouquier-Tinville, a man who even
at that time was notorious as being amongst
the most inhuman of the monsters who then
governed revolutionary France. His appear-
ance has been described by Charles Mouselet
in his "Histoire Anecdotique du Tribunal
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 89
R^volutionnaire : " — ** He had a round-shaped
head, with thick black hair, a narrow brow,
a coarse and pock-marked complexion, with
a hard and defiant expression. It was diffi-
cult to meet his eyes, so savage was his
look. When he spoke he lowered his brow,
and his black eyebrows met. His voice was
harsh and imperious ; at first merely brutal
and coarse, he became more insolent and
violent. He seemed intoxicated, maddened
with the sight of blood, as people become
with the smell of powder; but his intoxica-
tion was ferocious, without pity, and every
victim seemed to be his personal enemy."
The tribunal which judged the Queen was
composed of a president and four judges, the
90 LAST DAYS OF
public prosecutor, the chief registrar, and fifteen
jurymen. The President's name was Her-
man, formerly a judge of the Pas-de-Calais ;
Coffinhul, Maire, Douz6-Verteuil, and Deli^ge,
the judges ; the registrar, whose real name
was P4ris, had, in consequence of that being
the name of the person who killed Michel
Lepelletier, altered it into the more classical
and sounding one of Fabricius. The witnesses,
over forty in number, consisted of all classes.
They appear to have been selected as much as
possible from among those who were known
or thought to be the enemies of the Queen.
Fouquier-Tinville had himself drawn out at
great length the act of accusation against the
prisoner, which the Queen's counsel, Chau-
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 91
veau-Lagarde, did not exaggerate when he
characterised it as '* Toeuvre d'enfer." In it
the Queen is compared to Messalina, Brune-
hauldt, Fr^d^onde, and the Medici. He
declared that since her arrival in France she
had been the curse and leech of the French
nation ; that she had maintained a secret corre-
spondence with the man known as the King
of Bohemia and of Hungary ; that her aim was
the ruin of the country ; that by her instigation,
and in concert with the brothers of Louis Capet
and the infamous Calonne, formerly Minister
of Finance, she had lavished the wealth of the
country, the spoils of the sweat of the people,
in maintaining her criminal expenditure and
in paying the agents of her treasonable in-
92 LAST DAYS OF
trigues ; that she had sent millions out of the
country to the Emperor, in order to maintain
the war against the Republic, and that she had
thus exhausted the revenues of the country.
Farther, that since the commencement of the
Revolution she had not ceased an instant from
maintaining a treasonable correspondence with
the enemy, and by every means in her power
aided and abetted a counter-revolution. He
then went back to the celebrated affair of
the Gardes du Corps at Versailles in 1789
at great length, and also to the flight of
Varennes ; accused her of the loss of life on
the 17th July 1792 at the Champ de Mars,
and declared that it is owing to her that the
massacres occurred at Nancy and elsewhere.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 93
But it is needless to follow at greater length
this endless series of accusations, which seem
more as if they came from the disordered brain
of a homicidal maniac than the accusations of
a man in his senses. Indeed, one can only
believe that some of the writings and actions of
the actors in the year of terror 1793 were
owing to a state of madness. It is said, and
on good authority, that Fouquier-Tinville
latterly confessed to being pursued by horrible
visions, and said that he distinctly saw the
spirits of those he had sent to death menac-
ing him, not in his dreams, like Richard IIL,
but in broad daylight.
In his charge he also referred to the horrors
of which the Queen had been accused when
M
94 LAST DAYS OF
in the Temple, and if regret could find a
place in such a nature at having gone so
far, the manner in which the Queen met this
hideous calumny must have told even on
Fouquier-Tinville. When Robespierre heard
what a sensation the sublime manner in which
the Queen had met that charge had made,
and the effect it had on the audience, he,
being then at dinner, broke his plate with
rage, and cursed the folly of Hubert and
Tinville in preferring it.
The first day s trial seems to have been un-
important. The Queen, on being asked her
name, replied, " Marie Antoinette de Lorraine
d'Autriche, aged thirty-eight, widow of the King
of France." As M. De Saint Amand remarks.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 95
she was not so old as she said, as only on the
2d of November would she enter her thirty-
ninth year.
Q. You had, before the Revolution, poli-
tical relations with the King of Bohemia and
Hungary, which relations were opposed to the
interests of France ?
A. The King of Bohemia being my brother,
I had no other but friendly intelligence with
him, and not political. If they had been the
latter, they would but have benefited France,
to which country my marriage had allied
me.
Q. Not content with ruining the finances of
France for your pleasures and intrigues, in
concert with infamous Ministers, you sent out
96 LAST DAYS OF
of the country which nourished you millions
to the Emperor ?
A. Never ! I know this accusation has often
been brought against me. I loved my hus-
band too well to dilapidate his country. My
brother had no need of French money ; and
by the ties which held me to France I could
not have given him any.
j2. It is you who taught Louis Capet the
profound art of dissimulation, wherewith he too
long deceived the good French people, who
could not imagine such depths of perfidy
possible ?
A. Yes. The people have been deceived,
and most cruelly, but neither by my husband
nor by me.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 97
Q. You have never ceased for an instant
to wish to destroy liberty; on any terms you
wished to govern, and to reascend the throne
over the corpses of the patriots ?
A. We had no need to remount the throne ;
we were on it. We never wished anything but
the happiness of France ; that she might be
happy, this was all we desired.
Q. What interest do you attach to the aims
of the Republic ?
A. The happiness of France is what I desire
above all things.
Q. Do you think that kings are necessary
to ensure the happiness of nations ?
A. An individual cannot decide such a
question.
98 LAST DAYS OF
Q. You doubtless regret that your son has
lost a throne, on which he might have been
seated, if it had not been that the people, en-
lightened as to their rights, had broken it ?
A. I should never regret anything for my
son, as long as my country is happy.
Two names that will be remembered as
long as any of the actors of this tragedy now
appear, — Tronson-Ducoudray and Chauveau-
Lagarde. The latter has left an account of
his interview with the Queen, whose honour-
able mission, with Ducoudray, was tm appear
as her defender. Lagarde was out of Paris
on the 15th of October when a message
reached him to present himself at the Con-
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 99
ciergerie. He was told at the same time that
I the trial would be resumed at eight o'clock on
the morning following. He lost not a moment
in presenting himself before his client.
" No one," he writes in his account of
Marie Antoinette's trial, — "no one who can
put himself into my place, and, forcing him-
self in such a spot, can but imagine what
my feelings were on seeihg the august pri-
soner, widow of the pious descendant of St.
Louis, daughter of the Emperor of Germany,
a Queen who, by her grace and goodness, had
been the joy of the most brilliant court in
Europe, and who had once been the idol of
the French nation.
"On approaching the Queen, my knees
loo LAST DAYS OF
trembled, my eyes filled with tears. I was
far more embarrassed than if I had been pre-
sented to the Queen and seen her in the midst
of her court, surrounded by all the pomp of
power. She received me with so serene a
majesty that I was soon reassured. I read
with her the act of accusation. On reading
this infernal work, I alone was overcome. The
Queen with perfect self-possession spoke to
me about it. She noticed that the gendarme
could overhear her, but, saying that this was
of no consequence, she continued her con-
versation with the same calm."
After inspecting the papers regarding the
Queen and the heads of accusations brought
against her, he found it impossible to arrange
MARIE ANTOINETTE loi
a defence during the short interval allowed
him. He returned to the Queen, and in-
formed her that it was absolutely necessary
to obtain a delay in order that he should
prepare the defence. " To whom will you
apply," asked the Queen, " for this delay ? "
When he said, " To the National Conven-
tion," the Queen at first positively refused,
so great was her detestation of that body,
which had ordered the execution of her
husband. But Chauveau - Lagarde declared
it must be done ; that it behoved him
and his colleague not to omit any circum-
stance that could be of use to their cause;
that without a thorough examination of all
the accusations brought against her they
N
102 LAST DAYS OF
would fail in their duty ; that it was not
necessary for the Queen to frame under her
own name the demand to the Convention,
but to address, in the name of her advocates,
a plea against a precipitancy of action which
was an outrage to the name of justice. They
had not only, he urged, to defend the Queen,
but also the widow of Louis XVI., the
mother of that monarch's children, and the
sister whose name had been placed with hers
in the accusation. The Queen, till then in-
flexible, now gave way to his entreaties;
and herself wrote a letter to the Assem-
bly, in the name of her defenders, claiming
a delay for them. The letter was as fol-
lows : —
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 103
** Citizen President, — The Citizens Tronson
and Chauveau, whom the Tribunal have
given me as defenders, call my attention to
the fact that they have only to-day been told
of their mission, and in so short a time it is
impossible for them to examine the charges,
or even to go through them. I owe it to
my children to omit no way of entirely
justifying myself of these charges. My de-
fenders ask for a delay of three days; I
trust that the Convention will accord this to
them."
This letter, when it reached the hands of
Fouquier-Tinville, went no farther ; no notice
was taken of it, and on the following morn-
104 LAST DAYS OF
^"g (^5^1^ October) the Queen's trial was
resumed.
On her second examination the Queen
was allowed a chair. She wore the same
dress as when she first appeared before her
judges, and during the long day and far
into the next night maintained the composure
which had struck even those who most hated
her. At times she seemed unconscious of the
scene enacted around her, and her fingers
were observed to run on the arms of the chair
as if she were playing on a pianoforte.
Poor Rosalie seems to have been much
distressed at the Queen having been taken
from her prison at eight in the morning
without having had any kind of food, and
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 105
it was not till four in the afternoon that
she managed to obtain some broth for her.
But Rosalie had not the satisfaction of being
allowed to take it herself to the Queen ; and
she indignantly tells how one of the commis-
saries of police snatched the plate from her
hands and gave it to an overdressed woman
who was by him, who had expressed a desire
to see the prisoner, and who took it hence,
after having spilled half its contents.
The hall was densely crowded. Among the
mob that came in order to enjoy the spec-
tacle of the poor woman, once their Queen,
being for hours browbeaten by Fouquier-Tin-
ville, may have been a few sympathisers, a
few still loyal at heart, and with deepest
io6 LAST DAYS OF
sympathy for her to whom they were unable
even to show a sign of pity or respect. Some
arrests were made by one of the inspectors of
prisons, who had distinguished himself in the
human butcheries of September ; but only once
did the crowd, for one instant roused by the
noble dignity of the prisoner and the atrocious
charge preferred against her, show any feeling
in her favour.
The Queen, emaciated and pale as death,
took her seat, after being told by the Presi-
dent that she might seat herself. The act
of accusation was read, and the witnesses
appeared. Of these there were forty -one —
men of all sorts and conditions. Among them
was an ex - admiral and general, Charles
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 107
Henri d'Estaing, ex- Marquis Latour du Pin,
ex-Mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly (all
these three doomed to the guillotine), mer-
chants and gendarmes, a doctor, an artist,
servants and jailers. Among the forty-and-
one, Simon, the jailer of the Dauphin ;
Lecointre, who was a national guard at Ver-
sailles in the days of October; and Hubert,
the notorious editor of the " Pere Duchesne,'*
were specially selected as known enemies of
the prisoner; and a woman named Reind
Millot, formerly a servant in the royal family,
who declared that the Queen had sent two
hundred million francs to Vienna. These were
ready to swear anything, however improb-
able, however atrocious, against the Queen.
io8 LAST DAYS OF
As might have been expected, such men as
Bailly, D'Estaing, Latour du Pin, and Bernier,
the doctor of the Queen's children, treated the
august captive with respect. They knew that
this conduct would but ensure their own death-
warrants ; and even Manuel, formerly one of the
chiefs of the commune, now appeared touched
by so much misery so nobly endured.
All through the long hours of that awful
day the different witnesses were questioned and
cross-questioned. She saw again faces fami-
liar to her in the past years — faces that must
have recalled Versailles and the Tuileries;
and with what feelings of horror must she
have recognised her son s jailer and perse-
cutor among that crowd of witnesses !
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 109
When Hubert's time arrived, and the
charges relative to the conduct of the Queen
with her son were again alluded to, the Queen
deigned no reply. Seeing this, one of the
jurors called the attention of the President
to her silence. One can imagine what a hush
must at that moment have fallen on that
great crowd, eager to know what the Queen
would answer to such an infamy. But Marie
Antoinette was equal, aye, more than equal, to
the occasion. She rose from her chair, and
with a majestic voice exclaimed, " If I have
not answered, it is because Nature herself
refuses to answer such an accusation made
to a mother. I appeal to all that may be
present" A thrill ran through the vast hall
o
no LAST DAYS OF
— a thrill that has not ceased to be felt by
all who can enter into what the feelings
of that mother were at such a moment. No
wonder that, later in the day, a rumour got
abroad that, after all, the Queen would be
spared — would be transported, but not exe-
cuted, and that Rosalie heard it said that the
Queen had answered like an angel.
Throughout the trial there does not seem
to have been amongst the crowd any strong
expression of feeling either against or for the
Queen ; but they frequently called on her
to rise, so that she should be better seen
than when seated ; and once at this demand
she had said, " When will the people be tired
of my sufferings } "
MARIE ANTOINETTE. iii
Although none of the witnesses could bring
any proof of the things some alleged against
her, such as that she had intrigued with some
of the municipals when in the Temple, as
Simon swore ; or that she had, as Tissot
averred (the editor of a sheet only second in
sanguinary abominations to that of the P^re
Ducfiesne), given bonds which he declared he
had seen signed by her to obtain money out
of the public treasury, none of these were
produced ; nor could the letter which Didier
Journeil swore he had seen, in which the
Queen asked if the Swiss guard were to
be trusted, and if they would be prepared
to act when the time came. Although none
of these accusations could be in any way
112 LAST DAYS OF
proved, it was clear that the Queen was pre-
judged long before she appeared before the
Revolutionary bar, and that Fouquier-Tinville
had already her death-warrant in his pocket
ready to sign.
The Queen was asked the most trivial ques-
tions as well as the most outrageously absurd.
** Did you not/* the President asks her,
** abuse your influence over your husband
in order to get funds out of the public trea-
^ >>
sury r
*' Never," replies the Queen.
Q. Where, then, did you obtain all the
money with which you built and furnished
the Little Trianon, where you gave ffetes of
which you were always the goddess ?
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 113
A. It was from a fund that had been
made specially for that purpose.
Q. Was it not at the Little Trianon that
you became first acquainted with the La-
motte ?
A. I never even saw her.
Q. Was she not your victim in the famous
case about the diamond necklace ?
A. She could not have been, for I did
not know her.
Q. You then persist in saying that you
did not know her?
A. My place is not to deny ; it is only
the truth I have told, and intend to
tell.
Q. Did you not oblige the Ministers of
114 LAST DAYS OF
Finance to deliver up to her funds ; and on
some of them refusing, did you not threaten
them with your displeasure ?
A. Never.
Q. Did you not ask Vergennes to send
six millions to the King of Bohemia and
Hungary ?
A. No.
She is then accused of having been taken
into the confidence of the King, through a
letter written to a Minister, regarding the plan
of a campaign, with the intention, probably
understood, of inciting a civil war. The
Queen had never heard of such a letter.
However, the President again told her that
it was notorious that her influence over the
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 115
King was such as to make him do as she
wished ; and this charge, which to us seems
not at all an unnatural one, knowing how
very weak and wavering a man was poor
Louis, appeared a capital crime to those
who had a few months ago sentenced the
King to death, as being the cause of the
internecine w^r and for corresponding with
the enemy.
Even the Queen's family name was brought
against her as a proof of crime. President
Herman declared that as the Queen gave her
name as that of Marie Antoinette de Lor-
raine d'Autriche, it follows that she intended
seizing Lorraine and transferring it to Ger-
many.
ii6 LAST DAYS OF
" Did you not," he asks, " conceive such a
project at the time of your marriage ? "
On the Queen denying this absurd charge,
the President remarked that she called her-
self by the name of that province. He then
changed his ground, and demanded why the
Queen had treated her son (Louis XVII.)
in such a way that it was evident she looked
on him as the successor of his father on the
throne.
The Queen simply answered this by saying
her son was too young to talk to on the
subject ; that he sat at the end of the table
at meals, and that she waited on him herself
when he required it.
At four o'clock the sitting was suspended
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 117
for an hour. It was not till then that the
Queen, who must have been half dead with
fatigue and thirst, got some broth, carried to
her, as I have already said, not by Rosalie,
but by the hands of a stranger. That there
was risk in showing even so small an attention
to the prisoner is shown in the case of the
gendarme de Busne, who had, when no one
else dared, brought her a glass of water. For
this action, or for having offered her his
arm when, half blind as she had become,
the Queen could scarcely see her way along
the darkening corridors of the prison, he was
cashiered and imprisoned.
At the end of the examination of the
forty-one witnesses, the President asked the
p
ii8 LAST DAYS OF
Queen if she had anything to say for her
defence.
" Yesterday," answered she, " I did not know
the name of my witnesses, and did not know
what they would charge me with. Not one
of them has brought any single proof against
me. I end by saying, that, being the wife
of Louis XVI., I had to conform to his
wishes/'
Fouquier-Tinville then launched out in a
tirade against the Queen, who had been, he
declared, the cause of all the misfortunes of
the country.
It was midnight when the President in-
formed the Queen's defenders that in a quarter
of an hour the hearing of the witnesses would
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 119
end, and that they had to be ready with
their defence. A quarter of an hour was
given to the two advocates to answer the
host of statements that had been deposed
to during the last twelve hours against
her. They were merely listened to as
a mere matter of form, TinviUe being impa-
tient to close this lugubrious farce of a
trial.
When they had finished, Herman, the
President, summed up in a virulent diatribe,
in which he said that at length a great
example, a great act of justice, was given to
the universe. ** At length," he said, " equa-
lity triumphs. A woman that had been
surrounded by all that was most brilliant,
I20 LAST DAYS OF
all that the pride of kings and the servility of
slaves could invent, now occupies in the face
of the people's tribunal the same position
as any other malefactor. In this matter
not single actions or crimes has been sub-
mitted to your conscience and your enlight-
enment. You have to judge the entire life of
the accused since she seated herself by the
side of the last King of the French. If one
could have done so, we should have called
before the jury the shades of our brothers
massacred at Nancy, in the Champ de Mars,
in the frontier, in the Vendue, at Marseilles,
at Lyons, and at Toulon, destroyed in conse-
quence of the infernal machinations of this
modern Medicis." In conclusion he said.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 121
"As I have already stated, it is the entire
nation who accuse Antoinette ; all the poli-
tical events that have occurred during the
last five years are due to her, and arraign
her. The following are the questions which
the tribunal submits to you," — addressing the
jury : — ** ist, Has it been proved that intrigues
have been carried on between foreign powers
and other external enemies of the republic ;
and if so, have those intrigues afforded them
help and money which has enabled them to
invade the French territory and facilitated
the progress of their arms ? 2nd, Has Marie
Antoinette of Austria, widow of Louis Capet,
been found guilty of co-operating with such
manoeuvres, and carried on intelligence with
122 LAST DAYS OF
the enemy ? 3rd, Has it been shown that
a conspiracy has existed inciting a civil war
in the interior of the republic ? 4th, Has
Marie Antoinette been found guihy of abet-
ting such a conspiracy ? "
After being out of court an hour, the jury
returned into the audience chamber. The
chief juryman gave an affirmative answer to
all the four counts of the indictment.
The Queen, who had left the hall at the
same time as the jury, was now led in again.
The President read the declaration of the
jury aloud. Fouquier-Tinville then announced
that, in conformity with the two rules laid
down by the application of criminal law, Marie
Antoinette is sentenced to death ; her goods.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 123
if any, to be confiscated to the Republic ; and
that the just judgment be carried out within
twenty- four hours in the Square of the Re-
volution. Herman inquired if the accused
had any observation to make regarding the
application of the law as invoked by the pub-
lic prosecutor. For answer the Queen merely
shook her head. The sentence of death was
then delivered.
It was ten minutes past four in the morn-
ing of the 1 6th of October. The Queen
had, with hardly an interval, endured this
trial more than twenty hours.
The Queen appeared the calmest and the
least excited person in court ; she displayed
no sign of emotion. Rising from her seat, she
124 ^AST DAYS OF
walked away calmly and serenely, leaving her
judges — or rather murderers — without one
look of reproach or a shade of anger. But
on nearing the portion of the hall where,
beyond the barriers, the mob was collected,
she raised somewhat her noble head. There
does not seem to have been any demonstra-
tion here, amidst the people who loved to
jeer and mock the condemned as they were
led back to prison, in the short interval that
was left them still between time and eternity.
It may well be that the long patience of the
Queen, her simple deportment, and yet the
stately appearance of the woman, checked any
such show of feeling even among the mob,
eager to behold suffering and to feast their
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 125
eyes on the last moments of the victims of the
Revolution.
A great French painter has left a picture
of this scene. The Queen faces the spec-
tator as she walks along the side of the
barriers, above which the mixed crowd are
eagerly scanning her ; behind follow the gen-
darmes with shouldered muskets ; beyond,
under the dim light of a lamp, appear the
faces of the judges — a lurid background. Dela-
roche has introduced the thin handsome face
of a youth, who seems to feel the iniquity
of the transaction keenly : we recognise the
features of Bonaparte. Next to the almost
angelic sublimity of the figure of the Queen,
the most touching thing in the picture is the
Q
126 LAST DAYS OF
face of a young girl, who gazes with a look of
ineffable pity through her tears at the Queen
as she walks by.
Very truly has Sainte-Beuve written of this
trial of Marie Antoinette. " I do not believe,"
he says, " that a monument of more atrocious
stupidity, of greater ignominy for our species,
can exist than this trial of Marie Antoinette,
such as it can be read in the 29th volume of
Parliamentary History of the French Revolu-
tion. Most of the Queen's answers have been
altered or suppressed, but, as in all iniquitous
trials, the very text of the accusations tell
against the assassins. When one reflects that
a century which considered itself enlightened
and of the most refined civilisation, ends with
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 127
public acts of such barbarity, one begins to
doubt of human nature itself, and to fear that
the brute which is always in human nature
has the ascendancy."
In the accounts of the last hours of the
Queen there are some discrepancies. Though
De Goncourt, for instance, in his admirable
life of Marie Antoinette, says, that after her
condemnation Marie Antoinette was not led
back to the prison she had occupied since the
I ith of September, but to the condemned cell, a
prison constructed in one of the angles of the
outer ward. Saint Amand and others state, on
the other hand, that the prisoner passed the
few hours left her before execution in her old
prison ; and this seems to me, from several
128 LAST DAYS OF
circumstances, more probable than the for-
mer version. Nor does Rosalie Lamorliere
refer to the Queen having been removed
to another prison after the trial, which she
would doubtless have done had it taken
place.
But one alteration the Queen must have
noticed on her return to prison ; this was,
that the gendarme de Busne, who had shown
enough compassion to bring her a glass of
water when she complained of thirst, and who,
when, half blind and weak from the long fast
and the accumulated misery she had endured,
and almost falling, on coming to the steps
which lead down to the corridor, let fall that
piteous complaint, ** I can go no farther; I
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 129
cannot see," had given her his arm, was no
longer there to assist her.
In those last hours it seems that the guard
over the Queen was a little relaxed. She was
allowed for the first time a light, and the turn-
key was allowed to bring her writing materials.
It was then that she wrote that letter to her
sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, which is the
noblest memento to her memory. It must
have been broad daylight before she could
have finished that letter — the light of her last
day in this troublesome world.
To have been able, after all she had gone
through, to write that noble letter, so firm even
in its writing, so divine in its forgiveness of
her enemies, so tender in its allusions and^its
I30 LAST DAYS OF
affection for her loved ones, proves, if farther
proof were necessary, what a glorious charac-
ter was that of the Queen — a character and
nature which had come out so nobly from the
fierce fire of suffering and trial such as few
human beings can have known or conceived.
The letter, which it is almost a sacrilege
to attempt to translate, is as follows : —
** 16//1 October y half-past four 0'' clock of the
morning. — It is to you, my sister, that I write for
the last time. I have been condemned — not to
a shameful death, it is only such to criminals,*
but to rejoin your brother. Innocent like
* The Queen must have had Corneille's fine line in her
mind — "Le crime fait la honte, et non I'^chafaud" — when
she wrote this passage.
t
1
I
t
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 131
him, I hope to show the same firmness as he
in the last moments. I am calm, as one is
when one's conscience has nothing to reproach
one with. I feel a profound regret to leave my
poor children ; you know I lived but for them.
And for you, my good and tender sister — you,
who by your friendship have sacrificed every-
thing in order to remain with us, in what a
situation do I leave you ! I have learnt in
the course of the trial that my daughter has
been separated from you. Alas ! poor child !
I dare not write to her; she would not re-
ceive my letter. I do not know even if
this will reach you. Receive for them both,
by this, my benediction. I hope that one day,
when they will be older, that they will be again
132 LAST DAYS OF
united with you, to enjoy your tender care.
May they both think of what I have never
ceased to instil into them, that high principle,
and the exact performance of duty, are the
most important things in life ; that affection
and mutual trust will ensure its happiness ;
that my daughter may feel at her present
age that she must ever be ready to help
her brother by advice, which the larger
experience she possesses and her affec-
tion may dictate. May my son, for his
part, render every attention to his sister,
every service that affection can prompt. May
they mutually feel that, in whatever position
they may find themselves, that their only
happiness can be in mutual affection. May
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 133
they take example by us. How often in our mis-
fortunes has our affection been our consolation !
When one is happy, one's happiness is doubled
by sharing it with a friend ; and where can one
find a friend more tender, more true, than in
one's own family ? May my son never, never
forget the last words of his father, which I now
repeat expressly to him : * That he must never
seek to revenge our death/ I have to speak
to you of a subject very painful to my heart.
I know how much trouble this child must have
caused you ; forgive him, my dear sister ;
think of his age, and how easy it is to get a
child to say what one wants, and even what he
himself cannot understand. A day will come,
I hope, when he will feel all the more all he
R
134 L^Sr DAYS OF
owes to your tenderness for both of us. It still
remains for me to confide to you my last
thoughts. I had wished to write them at the
beginning of the trial ; but besides my not being
allowed to write, the proceedings have been
so rapid that I should not even have had time
enough. I die in the Catholic apostolic and
Roman religion, that of my fathers, in which
I have been brought up, and which I have
always professed; having no spiritual consola-
tion to expect, not knowing whether there still
exist here any priests of that religion ; and
even if there were, the place where I am
would expose them too much if they were to
come here, I sincerely demand pardon of
God of all the faults I mav have committed.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 135
* —
I hope that in His goodness He will deign
to receive my last prayers, as well as those
which I have made for a long while, that
He will deign to receive my soul in His
mercy and goodness. I ask pardon of all
I know, and of you, my sister, in particular,
for all the trouble that, without meaning, I
may have caused them. I forgive my ene-
mies all the harm they have done me. I
bid farewell to my aunts and all my brothers
and sisters.
" I had friends ; the idea of being for ever
separated from them and their sorrows is one
of the greatest regrets that I carry away with
me in my death. May they learn, at least,
that until my last moment I thought of them.
136 LAST DAYS OF
** Adieu, my good and tender sister; may
this letter reach you 1 Think always of me : I
kiss you with my whole heart, as well as those
poor dear children. My God ! how agonising
it is to leave them for ever ! Adieu, adieu ! I
will now only occupy myself with my spiritual
duties. As my actions are not free, they may
perhaps bring me a priest ; but I here protest
that I will not say a word to him, and that
I will treat him as a perfect stranger."
This letter never reached its destination.
Bault gave it into the charge of Fouquier-
Tinville, who kept it. When he was arrested
after the "9th Thermidor," this letter was
seized with his other papers. On it may be
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 137
seen Fouquier-Tinvilles signature, as well
as those of the commissioners, Lecointre,
Legot, and Massieu. In 18 16 the letter
was first made public. An ex-Conventionist,
Courtois, gave it to some person unknown,
who presented it to Louis XVIII. It is
now carefully preserved in a cabinet in the
archives of the city of Paris, where I was
permitted, through the courtesy of the offi-
cials, to have a photograph taken of it.
In the expiatory chapel to the memory of
Louis XV I. and Marie Antoinette in Paris,
at the base of the monument to the Queen
this letter has been eno:raved in the marble.
Never, indeed, has a more touching last will
and testament been handed down to posterity.
138 LAST DAYS OF
The letter ends somewhat abruptly, and it
has been conjectured that the Queen was
interrupted before she had finished her letter ;
but as it is, nothing more is needed. The
allusion made to the probable visit of a
priest, and to her intention of treating him
as an absolute stranger, refers to the proba-
bility of one of the priests who had sworn
fidelity to the constitution being sent to her.
It is difficult now to realise the horror which
these Revolutionist priests inspired among
Roman Catholics during the days of the
Revolution. It was with the greatest difficulty
that Louis XVI. was forced to give way re-
garding the rights of the priesthood ; and the
Queen had a perfect horror of these men,
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 139
who had, as she considered, become traitors to
God and to their rdigion.
In Madame Royale's memoir allusion is
made to the supposed visit of a priest, by
whom the sacraments were administered to
the Queen ; but I think this is a case of the
wish having been father to the thought ; and
neither Rosalie Lamorli^re nor the wife of
Bault alludes to such an occurrence, which,
had it taken place, they would most probably
have done. I believe the only priest who
saw the Queen was one named Girard, the
cur6 of the Church of Saint- Landry, who
entered her prison at half-past seven on the
day of her death. He asked her whether
she would confess herself to him. She asked
I40 LAST DAYS OF
him who he was. He replied, ** A cure of
Paris." " There are few such/* said the
Queen. He then asked the Queen if he
should accompany her to the scaffold. "As
you please," she answered ; but she pre-
ferred making her peace with God alone to
confessing to a man whom she considered
a renegade and a perjured servant of her
Lord.
After writing her letter, the Queen lay
down on her bed, where, coming into the
prison, Rosalie found her. She complained
of suffering from cold, and had covered her
feet with her pillow. An officer of the
gendarmerie was seated in a corner of the
room when Rosalie entered. The Queen,
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 141
whose face was turned to the wall, was cry-
ing silently, and had probably not slept.
Rosalie asked her if she would have any
food. ** Bring me a little broth," she an-
swered; but was only able to swallow a few
spoonfuls.
At eight o'clock, after the priest had seen
Marie Antoinette, Rosalie returned to the
Queen to help her to change her dress. The
Queen with her own hands laid out her shirt,
and the white gown she had kept for this her
last appearance in public. The gendarme,
who never let his prisoner out of sight for
an instant, approached the two women — 'the
Queen, who had stooped behind the low
screen, so as to be as much hidden as
s
142 LAST DAYS OF
possible, and Rosalie, who stood in front of
her. Seeing this, Marie Antoinette implored
him, while hastily crossing her shawl over
her shoulders, with extreme gentleness, to
be allowed to change her clothes without
his watching her. " I cannot consent to
that," was the brutal answer ; " my orders
are to watch all your movements." The
Queen sighed, and, with as much secrecy
as was possible, changed her dress, remov-
ing the black gown she had worn during
the trial, and replacing it with the white
one, tying the muslin (fichu) shawl behind
her, after crossing it below her neck, and
was now ready for death.
Rosalie, who dared not even bid the
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 143
Queen farewell, now left her, retiring to
her room, where we can well believe that
"she wept bitterly." There was enough,
surely, to make the very stones cry out and
weep.
Between that hour — soon after eight — ^and
ten the Queen was engaged in prayer.
At ten the turnkey Larivi^re entered the
prison ; he was the son of the old woman
who had waited on the Queen when she
first came to the Conciergerie. He said
that Bault had told him to go to the
Queen, and to wait there for him. The
Queen asked him to thank his mother for
the trouble she had taken when with her,
and to pray for her.
144 LAST DAYS OF
Another gendarme had meanwhile entered
the prison, and soon after the judges entered
with the registrar, Fabricius. The Queen,
who had been on her knees by her truckle-
bed, now rose to receive them. Hubert
addressed her first. ** Listen," said he, " to
your sentence." All four took off their hats,
which appears to have struck the others as
a peculiar mark of respect ; — of respect, I
take it, to the Tribunal, and not intended as
a mark of respect to the Queen, although
Bault's wife remarks that they seemed struck
by the majestic appearance of the Queen.
** It is unnecessary," said Marie Antoinette,
" to read it ; I know but too well the sen-
tence."
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 145
One of the judges said, " That is of no
consequence ; it has to be read to you a
second time.*'
The Queen said no more, and the sen-
tence was read.
While this was going on, the executioner,
Sanson, a youth of gigantic stature, entered.
He approached the Queen and said, "Give
me your hands."
The Queen for the moment appeared to
lose her self-control and started back. *'Will
my hands be tied ? The King s were not."
(Here the poor Queen made a mistake, as
Louis's hands were fastened, but not till he
had reached the scaffold.)
" Do your duty ! " said the judges to
T46 LAST DAYS OF
Sanson ; and those fair white hands were
roughly and *' too tightly " (/r^ /^^O bound
by a cord behind her back.
To revert for a moment to the costume
the Queen wore at her execution. Besides
the gown and shawl, both of which were
white, she had placed a small linen cap on
her head, but had removed the black
widow's crape bands that till that day had
gone around it, and, falling at the sides, were
attached by a loose knot over her breast.
This detail is not as trivial as it may
seem, for it shows how much the poor
woman must have realised her last moments,
and had so prepared her head-dress that in
a moment she could remove her cap and
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 147
be ready for the fatal blow. On her feet
were a pair of high-heeled shoes, which
she had taken great care of. The shape of
these high-heeled shoes was called "i /a
Si. Huberty'' Whether or not she her-
self had cut her hair before Sanson ap-
peared, as some think (the De Goncourts,
among others, state this as being the case
in their history of her last moments), or
whether, which I think far more probable>
seeing that no scissors or other implement
whereby she could have cut her hair with
her own hands was allowed her, her hair
was cut by the executioner — which is the
view taken by Mons. de Saint Amand —
it was the '^ derni^re toilette',' as the French
148 LAST DAYS OF
Style this last preparation of the victim for
the scaffold. According to Madame Bault's
account, the Queen's hair was cut by Sanson
after he had tied her arms, — arms ** that were
not born for bondage,*' — behind her back.
The Queen, looking back, could see him
placing the shorn tresses in his pocket.
"This I saw,*' adds Madame Bault, "and
I would I had never seen that sight," — a
sight which, she might well say, she ''could
never forget."
There seems some reason to believe that
even at this last hour an attempt would
still be made to rescue the Queen. Some
scheme of delivering the Queen on her way
to the Place de la Revolution appears to
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 149
have been concocted, but, like all the attempts
made to save her, it only ended disastrously.
Two people were arrested by the police — a
woman named Fournier and a young wigmaker.
Basset by name. They were both executed.
A strange circumstance was, that immediately
after the Queen's execution a man named
Maingot was found beneath the- guillotine dip-
ping his handkerchief in the Queen's blood.
He had a pink in his mouth, which some have
thought was a rallying-badge, and possibly he
was connected with De Rougeville and his
friends. The authorities, however, had taken
every precaution to make even the most de-
termined attempt at a rescue impossible. As
early as five that morning nearly all the troops
T
\
ISO LAST DAYS OF
in Paris were under arms ; the roll of the
drum was heard through all the sections ; the
streets along which lay the route of the
.Queen's passage were lined with troops, of
whom, at seven o'clock, thirty thousand were
afoot. The bridges were guarded with
cannon, the gunners standing by ready with
lighted matches ; artillery were also placed on
the principal open places and points of junc-
tion. At ten o'clock no carriage was allowed
in any of the streets that lie between the
Conciergerie and the Place de la Revolution ;
and all Paris was patrolled. All this military
display, which sounds as if an enemy's army
were at the very gates of Paris, had been
brought out merely to see a woman die 1 The
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 151
whole town seemed to be in the streets that
morning. It was thickest in front of the Con-
ciergerie, before the yard through which the
prisoner would pass. Before those beautiful
iron gates, on which the royal arms of France
and the golden lilies are conspicuous, every
window near had its group of spectators ; the
very house-tops were covered with the people.
The crowd was immense here, but in the vast
space around the guillotine it was still greater.
The terraces of the Tulleries gardens were
crowded — so were the Champs Elysdes ; and
wherever a glimpse of the guillotine could be
obtained, there the people waited. Every
window along the Rue St. Honor6 held spec-
tators, although the people had been warned
not to appear at their windows.
152 LAST DAYS OF
Eleven o'clock strikes. The wretched open
cart, with its single horse, its plank the only
seat, without even the luxury of straw, has
been already driven into the yard of the prison.
In fifteen minutes more there is a stir among
the people ; all eyes are now fixed on the barred
gates on the right at the end of ^he courtyard,
and the Queen ascends the prison steps.
On seeing the cart she made an involuntary
pause, expecting that she would have had a
covered carriage to go in, as had been allowed
the King; but the Revolution since the 21st
of January had gone on apace, and no more
exception would be made for her than for the
other victims of its judgments. The people
seemed to approve of the Queen's hands being
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 153
tied behind her, and Sanson make a point
of displaying the cords. Still, with proud
step and undaunted mien, Marie Antoinette
advances. In a moment more she reaches
the steps placed against the back of the cart,
and at first seats herself with her face to the
horse. Sanson has placed his hand beneath
her elbow to help her up those unsteady steps ;
she thanks him with a look, and gets in
alone. Seeing she has placed herself facing the
horse, he tells her to alter her position, and she
now seats herself with her back to the horse.
Girard the priest, in laic dress, sits next her ;
Sanson is behind the Queen. Both he and
his assistant have their three-cornered hats
under their arms. " On that occasion," as De
1 54 I^AST DAYS OF
Goncourt remarks, " the only people who be-
haved with decency were the executioners."
The via dolorosa of the Queen was a long
one — the distance not great; but in order to
make Marie Antoinette, as one of the Jacobins
said, "drink long of death," the carriage was
made to go at a foot's pace. During the first
part of the road traversed the mob appear to
have been too much amazed on seeing this
white-robed figure, so simple and yet so grand
in its forlornness — a woman whom many of them
had only beheld formerly through the windows
of a gilded coach led by eight horses and sur-
rounded by a brillant body-guard of cavalry —
now in this miserable cart which slowly jolted
over the rough pavement, with the public exe-
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 155
cutioner holding her imprisoned hands, to do
more than stare, and not till the procession
had got as far down as the Church of Saint-
Roch did the insults begin. Near this place a
scoundrel named Grammont, formerly an actor,
with the recommendation of having assisted
at the massacre of the loyalist prisoners at
Orleans and Versailles — he is reported to have
drank wine out of the freshly-cleaved skull of
one of the unfortunate people he had murdered
— led the way, prancing on horseback, and
inciting the mob to insult the Queen. Gram-
mont had taken the pains to place some of the
lowest of the rabble at various points of van-
tage, and when the Queen was led slowly by
them, these wretches, who had been liberally
156 LAST DAYS OF
supplied by Grammont with spirits, yelled and
shouted and mouthed at her. Grammont,
with his sword drawn, cursed the crowd for not
being more violent That Marie Antoinette
expected a terrible ordeal ere death released
' her is shown by her having asked one of the
gendarmes in her prison whether he thought
she would be allowed to reach the scaffold
without being torn to pieces on the way. The
man did his best to reassure her.
The line of this death-drive — this slow
agony of an unfortunate woman — can still be
followed. Crossing the Pont-au- Change, the
quay is followed as far as the Louvre; then
passing along the Rue-du-Roule, the long
winding street of Saint-Honor6 is reached.
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 157
It is there, in the narrowest part, by the
Church of Saint-Roch, as it still exists, that
the best idea of what this sight must have
been on that day can be judged, for most of
the houses are older than the first Revolution.
It was from a window of one of the houses
in this street the painter David drew a
terrible outline of the Queen seated in the
cart David's participation in some of the
bloodiest scenes of that time will render his
memory ever odious. He seems, from personal
spite, to have taken an intense dislike to the
poor Queen, who was not an admirer of his
severe and hard manner, and he lost no
opportunity of revenging himself. He was
one of the infamous inquisitors who examined
u
158 LAST DAYS OF
the royal children on the charges invented
by Hubert, and one must regret that no
worse fate befell him than exile when the
Bourbons were restored. Although a cruel
and vindictive caricature, there is enough in
the hasty outline sketch David made at that
moment to give one an idea of how the
Queen appeared. She is described by eye-
witnesses as being pale as death, with only
a hectic flush at her cheek-bones, the eyes
injected with blood, probably caused by so
many sleepless nights and intense suffering.
Only once during that long road to death
did the Queen display any emotion. A little
child held up by its mother in front of the
Church of the Oratory kissed its little hand
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 159
to the Queen, who burst into tears. Her own
child, her little Dauphin, must have then
been uppermost in her heart.
Owing to the difficulty the Queen had
to keep her place on the narrow plank on
which she sat, her head seemed strained and
rigid, but her eyes followed the crowd, and
even seemed attracted by the tricolour flags
that were displayed from out the windows
and in the balconies. Some suppose that
she had been told to look at a certain house,
in which a priest not ass^rmenti would
be placed, and from which he would give
her his benediction. But this seems to me
one of the legends that were invented by
those anxious to make believe that the last
i6o LAST DAYS OF
offices of the Roman Church were, even in so
distant a manner, accorded her. The different
inscriptions on the buildings, too, attracted
her attention. The oft-repeated " Libert^,
Egalit6, Fraternity," so veritably carried
out by that Government, must have
seemed strange to one who had known
the real meaning of that lying phrase.
On passing, the Palais Royal r- now called
** Palais Egalite " — arrests her attention. To
please the mob, several halts were made,
so as to enable the crowd to insult her.
" Messalina,** " Fr6d6gonde," are the terms in
which the street-viragos hail her. Before
the Jacobin Club, which bore the inscrip-
tion "Depot of Republican arms to destroy
MARIE ANTOINETTE. i6i
tyrants," a long halt was made, and the cries
and howlings of the mob rend the air. At
the corner of the Rue Royale, near Robes-
pierre's house, a triple rank of national guards
were stationed.
At length, after an hour of this torment,
the Place de la Revolution was reached, and
with it the term of the Queen's sufferings.
Passing between the noble buildings of the
" Garde Meuble " and the Admiralty, the
cart turned to the left, and when half across
the Square the guillotine is reached. When
Louis XVI. was executed, that instrument
stood between where now rises the Luxor
obelisk and the Rue Royale ; but for the
Queen the place has been changed, and the
i62 LAST DAYS OF
hideous narrow blood-coloured beams stand
between that spot and the gardens of the
Tuileries in the centre. Where formerly had
stood the equestrian statue of Louis XV. now
stood a huge plaster monument of Liberty.
Troops surround the guillotine, the crowd
is dense all around, and even among the
branches of the autumnal-tinted chestnut trees
of the royal gardens are many people.
With one last look at the great dome of
the palace, and after a short prayer, the Queen
rapidly mounted the scaffold steps ; she does
this without assistance, and with extraordinary
firmness.
She appears to have spoken but once — a
few words of apology to Sanson, on whose
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 163
foot she had trod. Even in death her
natural courtesy could not desert her. She
then, with a movement of her head, threw off
her cap, and is prepared for the fatal stroke.
A little after twelve, and her sufferings
were at length finished.
That night the following entry was written
by the gravedigger Toly, belonging to the
cemetery of the Madeleine and of the Ville
d'Ev^que : —
For the bier of the Widow Capet, . 6 livres.
For the grave and the gravediggers, .25 „
PRINTKU BY BALLANTVNB, HANSON AND CO.
EUINBURCH AND IX>NDON.
\
V
v^
PRINTKU BV BALLAMTYNB, HANSON AND CO.
KUINBURGH AND LONDON.
1^-
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